Fresh...

Fresher...

This week I've been working on a new spoon mold to add to my quiver.  This one will make 3 to work from.  One original Velo (the red one above came from that one), one smaller velo (the new one, based off of the two spoons I made in Oz) and the Edge Board...Stackin' them deep!

The Latest

Oh man, where to start!?
I've been back in the shop full time this week, working out some new ideas that impregnated my brain while in Australia.  I've shaped 5 boards in the past few days that I'm really pleased with, including a plug for a new spoon mold thats a bit smaller than the old one and more refined; suffice to say I'll be poppin' out some sweet little flex spoons when the mold is done...frothing!

In the meantime, here is Nico's spoon that I built with him in Byron Bay.  I stayed at Nico's for 2 weeks so we made the best of our time and used his back yard to do the majority of the work on the board while we weren't surfing.

I didn't forsee building a spoon so I didn't bring the template with me; I put this one together using the Greenough/Wildnerness stubby template I've been shaping the SB Stub from.  With hardly any tweaks it laid out into a perfect spoon template; from 6'7 down to 5', the curves matched up really cleanly...It showed me very clearly how direct Greenough's influence was being used in surfboard evolution at the time.  Pretty flippin' cool!

2006ish

My 5'6 kneelo from 2006/2007...She's alive and still going strong, but in need of a new variation soon, I think :)

This board taught me a lot about flex and the advantage of kneeboard-level positioning on certain wave types. I built this board in preparation for my first Flex Spoon, which happened about two years later:

Parting Shots

Friends were made.

Spoons were made

Tubes were made.

Thanks Oz <3

Back To It

5' Spoon in progress, in Nico's yard.

Spoonin'

A fresh one @ the greenhouse just before I left...

5'2 Velo Spoon

Swoon for 'da spoon!

ps - - check the new page under the header for stock boards for sale, I'll do my best to keep the list updated as boards come and go!

New TW Experiments Trailer

As if this and the coming few weeks wasn't slammed with enough excitement and blog-worthy stuff, check out the new trailer for the Tyler Warren Experiments!

I had the pleasure of meeting Jon Smart after all this time a few months back, super friendly dude and we shared some little peelers in the dark at Rincon...I met Tyler a few years back when I smashed my head open on some rocks, also at rincon, so that was interesting..

I can assure that both are un. real. guys.

I'm flattered and stoked to be able to contribute a rather unique craft to their journey, scope the Flex Spoon action amongst aaaaall this shred, yeeeeeHEW!

(embedding is disabled so click here or on the vimeo window to get to the trailers page!)

And for a extra few frame-grabs, check out THIS OLD POST

Recently...

Flex Spoonin'!

I get lots of emails looking for used spoons, so here's your chance...my main man jonny mack is selling his 'velo' style spoon, get on it; email him if you're curious about it:

mackjonny@gmail.com

Located down in San Diego, but meet ups/handoffs always work out nicely if you're not in the area...someone's always goin' somewhere...YEW!

Flex Spoon #...?

Mr.Clean...Recently pulled from the mold, another flex spoon sleeps quietly in wait...

Edge Spoon

for sale: contact me at ryan@pointconceptsurf.com, located in Orange County with it's current owner...can be moved if so desired!

Asking $1,300 obo, and been ridden ONE time. she's a winner thats for sure, all hand-layed-up in a mold the proper way.

FS: Edge Spoon

We're selling Jonny's edge spoon to fund a new experiment, she's offered up for $1,000 obo and is in flawless shape, ready to rock your socks...

Located in northern LA; contact me for more info... r.lovelace@pointconceptsurf.com

And some blog posts of the build: http://pcprogress.blogspot.com/2010/01/big-day.html

http://pcprogress.blogspot.com/2010/02/edgevelo-complete.html

Spoonin'

CJ slipping into one on the flex spoon.

Mackin'

Jonny Mack made my website, and he made it right...So I made him a couple of boards, here they is:

True blue tinted Flex Spoon....5' to fit.

Alongside his 7' Vampire Hull

Spoon foil...and his 7'11 miniglider from a little bit ago:

Nice little quiver :)

Ocean Tables

Best mid week trip ever. I'm claiming it now. Connor, Jason and I split town for an impromptu Spoon delivery and board swap between some shops down south...and the final nail in the coffin, to hang out with Lightner for a bit...

We hit the road and went southward, through miles of beautiful sprawl.

Found Kyle on a sunny afternoon and went to the food store...where we found a new friend kickin' it on the sidewalk.

Lightner made us the most outrageous family style meal and watched The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun and Morning of the Earth...Dave Allee and Cam Oden joined us as well as KL's fantastic roommate. We all had plenty of food and it was the bomb. We were all more than impressed...

Then he put hand soap in the dishwasher and things got heavy.

We crashed to My Eyes Won't Dry 2 and woke up at the buttcrack of dawn to luck into some standup tubing combo swell a few miles from the pad. We only had one pair of fins and one handplane for the three of us so we rotated and proceeded to get unending tubes through the morning.

It was a ridiculous two days, and by far the raddest of short trips I've ever embarked upon...Big ups to the man in the shadows, Kyle Lightner...

FLexin's

Cheyne's flex spoon v.2 in progress...slated to be done for his road trip through the northern areas of our state later this month!

This is the first spoon I've pulled out of the new mold for this particular model; I'm super stoked on how clean its all coming together for the first run; the pour foam even behaved itself this time and came out flawlessly.

RedSpooned

Photo: M.Barreira

While I was at the Wavegliders factory in Portugal, I built one spoon and tried my best to pass on some knowledge of the craft to Nico and Carlos...They did the finish work on it after I left and delivered it to her owner, Miguel; who just sent me this photo...whoooaoaoa!

Stage III in Moving Pictures

Took some time to throw together a bit of a short on Stage III, a spoon, my daily driver (6'7 fish/hull thing) and some of my friends...hope you enjoy it...It was a blast to film and put together!

SURF Portugal

Miguel Barreira shot this of me and the spoon that Waveglider's very talented Nico and I made him while I was in Portugal.

SURF Portugal also ran this other feature just after I left, the translation is on the way, hopefully they wrote nice things!

the Stage III

Here we go...time for me to get into some details...

This board has been circling my head now for about two months; but it's a project as a whole that's been a nagging question for me since my first experiments with this type of particular flex about four years ago.

What I'm after is a kind that twists around the center of the board, changing the outline, rocker and projecting out of turns with the same type of motion as a Flex Spoon.  Imagine a rail line lifting from the tail; altering the rocker curve and outline, then when unloaded, springing back to it's normal shape....Awesome.  I know.  

The problem is with a surfboard's thick center, you can't take the same theories that the spoons use (think: a tuning fork shape of stiffness around a flexible center) to achieve the same flex pattern; it's totally backwards and only stiffens the board (think: the greater the distance between two laminates, the stiffer the part will be).

I've been through the parabolic stringer thing and I'm not sold, it's not as flexy as I want...just not enough for me and what I'm thinking of.  This brings me back to where I started.  Here is my new project-in-progress; I've named it Stage III.  

I built a 1/8" thick Paulownia skin that is shaped to use the nose and tail areas of the board to act as a torquing forces around the weaker center.  That was then sucked into the area that I routed out of the deck so it would sit flush:

In the bag ^

After removing it from the bag the board felt way too stiff so I did some brainstorming and took the volume out of the sides of the board, in order to lessen the distance between my final laminate layers.  This will be replaced with EVA foam after glassing:

That got the board much much closer, but it didn't blow me away until I decided to route the center out of the paulownia patch to allow the shape to work as two individual arms instead of one twisting body.  the strength nose-to-tail is 99% unaffected, but allowing MUCH more twist.  That cavity was then filled back in with EPS foam:

This thing threw me for a loop today but with a whole lot of brainstorming it's transformed into something more than I could have thought up.  I've gotten too deep into the 'plan' with some earlier boards, this one i've decided to work as I go and see what I can do on the fly and work as I go with the flex pattern.

Tomorrow I'll be bagging the deck Kevlar and 2oz fiberglass on...I'm so pumped....